“We are in the business of supporting the First Amendment,” said American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer David Goldberger in 1978. “We do not support the ideas of this particular organization, nor have we ever, nor will we ever.”
The “organization” Golderberger referenced was the National Socialist Party of America.
Nazis.
“But the issue is not the content of their views,” Goldberger insisted back then. “The question is what is the power of government to pick and choose among speakers in the marketplace of ideas?”
Forty-five years ago, the ACLU famously showed how far they were willing to go in the defense of free speech when it defended neo-Nazis’ First Amendment right to hold a rally in the heavily Jewish city of Skokie, Illinois. The ACLU won its case, yet it still was a controversial stance, even among ACLU members, many of whom left the organization over it.
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